The Sacred Beetle and Others 



to hoist herself up through such a maze as 

 never Copris mansion knew before, the 

 Beetle must rub against and touch the units 

 of the heap. But she counts none the better 

 for that. To the insect all this is just the 

 home, is just the family, worthy of the same 

 care at the summit as at the base. The 

 twelve produced by my trickery and the two 

 of her own laying are the same thing in her 

 arithmetic. 



I present this strange mathematician to any 

 one who comes and talks to me of a glimmer 

 of reason In the insect, as Darwin claimed. 

 It is one of t\vo things: either this glimmer 

 does not exist, or else the Copris reasons 

 divinely and becomes a St. Vincent de Paul 

 of insects, moved to pity by the sad lot of the 

 homeless. Make your choice. 



It Is possible that, rather than abandon the 

 principle, perhaps men will not shrink from 

 folly and that the compassionate Copris will 

 one day figure in the evolutionists' Book of 

 Moral Deeds. Why not? Does it not al- 

 ready, with an eye to the same argument, con- 

 tain a certain tender-hearted Boa Constrictor 

 who, on losing his master, lay down and died 

 of grief? Oh, the fond reptile! These 

 edifying stories, compiled with the object of 

 tracing man back to the Gorilla, procure me 



234 



